Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/331

 irrigation ditches. Once a light swung across the track, a mile ahead. It brought the lever out to full speed again, and a carbine ready, and the two figures in the car lower down behind their barricade. A voice shouted to them, petulantly, out of the darkness as they swept past, but that was all.

They were grinding and screeching on a curve again, before McKinnon could lessen the speed. As they swept around the sharp quarter-circle, the car descended on what must have been a grazing burro or a steer. The heavy framework shuddered with the force of the impact; there was an animal-like sound, half-groan, half-grunt, as the obstructing black mass was thrown aside. McKinnon felt a spurt of blood flung up in his face, and the next moment held his breath, for he knew they had sped out on a cobweb of steel that bridged the cañonlike bed of a river. But still they kept on, up and up, until the gradient began to tell on the motor and the air grew perceptibly cooler. Forest trees were about them now, and they could hear the startled call of birds and the cry of monkeys. Once a jaguar called out through the night, and once, as they swept past a sleeping village of little white huts, they saw the glow of coals in an open mud oven.

But still the flying wheels carried them up